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Sitting beside my bedroom window, in the darkness, I smoke and look at the stars, points of icy light in the hot July black of the sky. If only she wouldn’t question me. If only I could stop myself from answering. Why can’t she ever sleep and leave me alone? Or die.

Why can’t she die and leave me alone?

And if she did, it would leave me alone, all right, completely. Would that be any better? I don’t mean it, anyway. I couldn’t really mean that. Of course we have our ups and downs, she and I. But as for wishing anything bad to happen –

You mean it all right, Rachel. Not every minute, not every day, even. But right now, you mean it. Mean. I am. I never knew it, not really. Is everyone? Probably, but what possible difference can that make? I do care about her. Surely I love her as much as most parents love their children. I mean, of course, as much as most children love their parents.

Nick – listen – I love you.

My forehead is on the windowsill, and then finally I’m able to look up and out. I don’t know what I’m doing. The curtain is drawn back so the room contains the uncertain outer light, the grey light of the evening, the leaden light of the moon. And when I turn around I can see myself in the mirror, not quite see but almost, the silver fishwhite of arms, the crane of a body, gaunt metal or gaunt bird.

I can’t bear it.

Listen, my love – whatever your terms – I don’t make any conditions. Nick, do you know what I love about you? I love the way your voice sounds, deep but with that scepticism I used to fear and don’t fear now, and the way your skin feels, and the hair that grows blackly down to your belly and around your sex, and the muscles that lie within your thighs. It was good – wasn’t it?

– They are in a warm concealed place, a room but not a room, a room nowhere, very apart, locked away, no one able to knock and enter, nothing around, only this bed. The spasm of love, and then his eyes opening, and his praising voice saying –

Relax, Rachel. And I say I’m sorry. There was a Hudson Bay point blanket on the bed, scarlet with one black stripe, almost as needle-textured as the grass, and the thought shot in and out of my head, why would anyone want such a heavy blanket on their bed in the very height and heat of summer?

Why did it have to be that way? All right, God – go ahead and laugh, and I’ll laugh with you, but not quite yet for a while. Rachel, stop it. You’re only getting yourself worked up for nothing. It’s bad for you. Why bad? I’ve felt a damn sight better since I stopped considering my health.

That’s interesting. I have stopped. I didn’t know. The reason is so plain. Anyone looking at it from the outside could see why, and smile. Don’t they think I know?

– The car, his. He turns off the engine, and they are in the quiet, and he bends towards her, but with an unforeseen deliberation, as though he’s forming words in his head and hasn’t quite achieved them. She has no idea what he is going to say. “Rachel, look, honey, I’m not so marvellous at saying things –”

No. All wrong. He’s quite good enough at saying anything he wants to say. And he doesn’t say honey. He says darling. Somebody else must have said honey, but I can’t think who it could have been, or when. Maybe it was the salesman who travelled in embalming fluid. Do that part over again.

– He makes a slightly flippant thing of it, but the reality is obvious to her, the tension of him, the sureness that hides some unsureness.

“Listen, darling, do you think life as a Grade Eleven teacher’s wife would be a fate worse than –”

No. He wouldn’t say it like that. I don’t know how he would say it. Maybe I can’t imagine it only because he never would. Why not? There’s nothing wrong with me. He said he liked my shoulders. And the skin of my thighs. He said –

Nothing else. He said nothing else. He told me about his grandmother’s samovar. But that was my fault.

I’m out of my mind. Mad as any Grecian woman on the demented and blood-lit hills. I’m sitting here thinking of all this, when I should be doing something. I must get up now. I must go to my dresser